LYDIA CORNELL: Author, actress, comedienne, talk show host, inspirational pubic speaker, best known as the star of ABC's "Too Close for Comfort" as TV legend Ted Knight's daughter; HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, and over 250 shows, episodes and movies worldwide. An international celebrity and one of TV's most popular, shyest sex symbols... "Political" no longer means what it did when we started this blog. It's about transformation and life-saving issues for women: equal pay for equal work...

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

TODAY ON BASHAM AND CORNELL PROGRESSIVE TALK we interview Mark Green, new owner of Air America and author of the brilliant new book "LOSING OUR DEMOCRACY: How Bush, the Far Right and Big Business Are Betraying Americans for Power and Profit.

Mark is the founder and president of the New Democracy Project - a national/urban affairs institute utilizing the assets of New York City to promote democratic participation, economic fairness and social justice. He was Democratic nominee for Mayor of New York City in 2001. Check out Mark's web site New Democracy Project.org

Friday, March 9, 4 p.m. PST I'm on THE SPIRITUAL POLITICIAN on BBS Radio Melinda Pillsbury Foster's live radio show, which is also on tape THE SPIRITUAL POLITICIAN

THE COVERUP: AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY

"Economic domination through warmongering." - Hilary Rosen

GOOGLE IMAGE SHACKIn legal terms, the jury has spoken in the Libby case. In political terms, Dick Cheney is still awaiting a judgment.For weeks, Washington watched, mesmerized, as the trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr. cast Vice President Cheney, his former boss, in the role of puppeteer, pulling the strings in a covert public relations campaign to defend the Bush administration’s case for war in Iraq and discredit a critic. - From the New York Times: By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

“There is a cloud over the vice president,” the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, told the jury in summing up the case last month.

This is not a simple coverup, this is an absolute tragedy. There are lives at stake; we've lost thousands of our own soldiers in an illegal, mismanaged war. And hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians have died in the needless bloodshed, including children. Two little boys searched for their 3-year old sister in the rubble of their apartment, after a car bomb went off. All they found was her hand clutching her teddy bear. What Cheney, Rove and Bush have done to this beautiful world, is criminal. I am a student of metaphysics, and believe that the more we view our fellow man with fear, hatred and negativity — the more we increase these evils, the very things we don't want. The new book THE SECRET basically says the same thing: what you focus on, grows. But when it comes to crimes like this, "Silence is complicity," in the words of Edmund Burke. I waver between wanting to see Bush, Cheney, Rove and Coulter as "spiritually sick" people who need our prayers on one hand — and corrupt criminals who have no compassion for their fellow man. It's a dilemma.

A WAR MOTHER: Marsha Walker's son survived a suicide bomb in Iraq. "...Military personnel have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution, not an allegiance to this President-whose own mother, of course, did not have to endure being a "blue star" mom for a similar senseless war. This war is illegal, goes against the Constitution�. A person of my background does NOT make these accusations lightly." Marsha says she felt an obligation to correct misinformation. Just four months before, her son Chris was part of a convoy outside Baghdad ambushed by a suicide bomber. From Earl Brockenfeld's radio blog: radio.weblogs.com/ 0107064/2005/07/

WHY THE LIBBY VERDICT IS SO DAMNING by Arianna HuffingtonBefore the GOP spin machine kicks into high gear, shouting from the mountain tops that the Libby verdict is just about making false statements to the FBI, and that no one was ever charged with the underlying crime of outing Valerie Plame, let's make it clear that Libby was found guilty not just of perjury but of obstructing justice -- obstructing justice in order to encumber the investigation and keep secret the dark, ugly truth about how the White House sought to cover up its lies about Iraq and its efforts to intimidate and silence critics of the administration.

But the cover ups are unraveling. And they are unraveling at a speed and in a quantity that guarantee Bush's legacy will both be marked by the tragedy of the Iraq war, and soiled by corruption, indictments, and convictions.

So on the same day that the Libby jury returned its guilty verdict, we have the second day of searing and sickening testimony about the way we've been treating our wounded troops at Walter Reed, and Congressional hearings investigating the sudden firing of eight U.S. attorneys for allegedly being too zealous in their prosecution of GOP corruption. And with Democrats back in control of Congress we can expect more of the same over the next 22 months.

Following the verdict, one of the Libby jurors asked reporters, "Where's Rove? Where are these other guys?" The answer: waiting for a whole flock of chickens to come home to roost.HUFFINGTON POST

NEW ITEM: It's too bad the corporate culture is so deeply entrenched in hurting the American worker. It's beyond Bush and Cheney and Rove. In L.A. just now, a sweat shop owner was busted. It was discovered he had 91 million dollars in U.S. Government contracts to make Army uniforms. Using slave labor in horrid conditions. Employees were docked $20 for taking bathroom breaks over 2 minutes....